Opinion: Whats it like working for a company you dislike

I teach Client Orientation and Client Experience in several master’s programs, both Marketing and MBA, and I really like to do an exercise on what is most associated with client orientation and what behaviors are associated with bad practices to eradicate. For the past few years, I have seen lines of action coinciding in what are considered good practices that generate confidence, or bad practices that generate a perception of hatred, aversion, distrust and negativity. I want to focus on the second ones.

In a systematic way, year after year, course after course, the same things appear, the same behaviors. The most hated brands are telecommunications companies, airlines, public administration, banks and, more recently, the technological ones associated with monopolistic behavior and, what is worse, they are perceived as owners of something sensitive to the privacy and privacy of people: their data.

We abhor by definition those who play in less competitive markets, whether monopolistic or oligopolistic. The oligopoly, competition “imperfect”, markets little competed, usually guarantee profit, until they open sooner or later, but ensure, on the other hand, that customers will not have sympathy for us. Small is beatituful ! If the company is able to connect its size with the proximity and proximity, commercial intimacy and honesty, it will project much better a true customer orientation culture.

Another problem that usually occurs is depersonalization. Consumers hate to feel like figures, as impersonal clients, we want to be treated as human beings by people who do not see, only, the bills to spend on us, but people with feelings and emotions (also, of course, the economic benefit) .

Consumers punish business orientation in the short term, and notice the pressure for the “placement” of products and services that we do not need. Perceiving selling pressure, dishonest advice, generates distrust that can not be turned into years of trust, absence of fear, fear, doubts and uncertainties. Appreciate that the company always sells, sells everything, takes money out of everything and I have to be aware that it charges me the right thing and is not misleading in the management of money … it is hateful, generates that when possible, in more open markets , the client does not want to know absolutely nothing about this type of companies.

There are companies and brands that treat the customer as a necessary evil and have after-sales systems focused on “the essentials by law”.

There are companies and brands that treat the customer as a necessary evil and have after sales systems focused on “the essentials by law”, generating few comforts or facilities in their use, generating fears and doubts in users who have two reasons for dissatisfaction: which generated the use of the after-sales system and the negative management of customer service systems, processes and procedures.

The management of dissatisfaction is considered, in general, “a disaster” by my interviewees. Nor is complaint management used as an effective tool for customer retention. Do not take advantage of that moment to make a promise to amend, compensate and retain the customer.

We do not support, conscious experts and profane of the existence of databases and their exploitation with CRM systems by all, evidence misinformation about the client: having to repeat who we are, what we seek and our incidents. We can not bear to notice that there is disinterest, that only transactions are filed, which has to do with the profitability of the company, and not with the tastes, preferences, needs, motivations and demands of each one. We do not tolerate feeling captive, feeling that there is no escape to work with this or that company.

They are organizations resistant to change, they do not take the initiative of the transformation and they go to the client and society, incorporating changes and technologies with reluctance when there is no other choice. They tend to be as dissatisfied with employees as they are with customers, generating a terrible cycle: unsatisfied and bad-tempered employees generate dissatisfied and angry customers.

When the client must wait, in these companies, they do not worry that waiting is not only unpleasant, but also pleasant and productive. The queues and waiting problems are evidence of poor management in the planning and in the ability of the systems to process the relationship with the client. Management of Operations, Marketing and Human Resources must work absolutely in unison, something that they do not do in the criticized companies.

And the years go by, I keep asking my students the same questions and getting the same answers. Organizations improve very slowly, and now, I am very sure that the previous practices are the lowest common denominator of non-customer-oriented companies.